George had done his best to get Paul to do something more, but in Paul’s estimation, George’s ideas—breaking into Berman’s house and breaking into Nano—were ridiculous and would be counterproductive. Under the surface he was as frantic as George, but he didn’t show it. He was certain there was no sense in racing off and getting arrested: they had to go to the police first and play it by the book, and they would do it that morning if they hadn’t heard from Pia, and they hadn’t.
The upshot of the strategizing was that Paul insisted on doing the talking with the police. Actually he would have preferred to go in alone, but George was having none of that, although he did acquiesce to the idea of letting Paul be the point man. Paul had told George it was he who knew the situation better, it was he who had last seen Pia and to whom she was due to return. In reality, Paul was worried George was likely to fly off the handle and make wild accusations against Berman and Nano that he couldn’t substantiate. They had to be calm and businesslike, and that was Paul’s department.
But meeting with the police wasn’t quite as easy as they had envisioned. After a half hour of waiting in unforgiving plastic chairs in the lobby of the building with what looked to be a half dozen other derelicts, some even less presentable than George, even Paul’s patience was wearing thin. By then George was pacing around like a caged animal, checking his phone and sighing loudly.
“Come on!” muttered George, more to himself than Paul. “Isn’t anyone going to help us?”
Finally an officer came out, called out their names, and led them to a desk, still in the public area of the facility.
“Aren’t we going inside the station?” asked George. He’d seen enough police procedurals to expect such treatment.
The young uniformed officer, whose badge read Gomez, looked at George. “This is where we conduct first interviews, sir.”
“Of course, thank you,” said Paul, glaring at George. Paul found himself remembering a saying that you know you’re getting old when the police officers start looking young, but Paul felt he was too young himself for such a sentiment. But still, Officer Gomez looked to be about sixteen. They all sat down. Paul then outlined the story to her including what he and George had done but leaving out the parts in which Pia had drugged her boss and that she had essentially broken into her former place of work. He could feel George shifting in his seat as he talked. After a while, Gomez put down her pen and pad and faced the two men.
“Sir, you understand it’s not against the law for someone over the age of eighteen to leave their home without warning. And they are entitled to their privacy. Even if she showed up in Denver, and we found her, if she said she didn’t want to be contacted by certain individuals, we couldn’t tell them we knew where she was.”
“Listen, I understand. I’m an ER doctor. We see domestic violence cases all the time. For all you know I could be an abusive partner looking for my girlfriend to beat up.”
“Paul, that’s ridiculous,” said George. “Officer Gomez, Pia Grazdani has been kidnapped. I’m sure of it. Not in the usual ransom sense, but more to get rid of her and shut her up. My friend isn’t saying all this because he’s afraid we won’t be taken seriously, but I’m convinced that’s the case.”
Paul sighed and looked at George with a combination of irritation and frustration. Officer Gomez stiffened in her seat. As Paul feared, she was now looking at George, unshaven and shabby, in a different light.
“Officer Gomez,” said Paul, using his calming, official doctor voice. “My friend is agitated. Before Pia disappeared, we know she had entered her place of work using a borrowed ID.” Paul didn’t elaborate on his euphemistic description of Pia’s elaborate foiling of Nano’s iris security system and flouting a specific order to stay away from her lab.
“She implied to me that she had stumbled on something illegal going on at Nano,” Paul continued in an even, calm tone. “I know you’re obliged to act if there is evidence that the person was abducted or is in danger, and I believe she is in great danger. The last time she saw me in the wee hours of Monday morning, after she had made the disturbing discovery, which she said she would explain later, she told me she would be coming directly back to my apartment. Sometime later she texted she was on her way but never showed up.”
“You’re essentially saying she got into the Nano complex illegally?” said Gomez. “This is the same Nano Institute up in the foothills that makes such effort on security to avoid, should we say, industrial espionage?”
“Yes,” said George, answering the question that had been directed at Paul.
“Wait here!” said Gomez, who got up and left.
“Great, George. You were supposed to let me do the talking. Now Pia’s gone from a missing-person’s case to a fleeing fugitive.”
“So what?” said George. “Which do you think they’d spend more time looking for?”
Thirty minutes later, Gomez reemerged, accompanied by a man in a suit who looked every inch the veteran detective that he was, with an outdated haircut, gray mustache, overweight, and an old-fashioned suit.
“Detective Samuels,” he said, shaking Paul’s hand and then George’s. “Okay, we called your friend’s place of employment, and they say she’s on paid leave and as far as they are concerned, there have been no irregularities or problems with unauthorized visitations. I also talked with Nano security who corroborated that there have been no reports of any break-ins or lost IDs that could be used to gain illegal entry. They did say you two gentlemen showed up there yesterday trying to get in and were turned away.”
Paul snuck a quick look at George.
“We’re worried about our friend,” said Paul. “She was very upset by something she found at work.”
“Did she say what it was?”
“No, as I mentioned to Officer Gomez, but I could guess it had something to do with a Chinese runner . . .”
“A Chinese runner? Okay,” said Samuels skeptically, “Officer Gomez filled me in on what you gentlemen have told her. Seems that your stories, or at least your interpretation of the situation, is somewhat different. You, Dr. Caldwell, feel that she was very upset and failed to come to your apartment in the wee hours of the morning after having illegally broken into the Nano facility. And you, Mr. Wilson, are convinced that this woman, who is on medical leave, was kidnapped?”
“I know she was,” said George.
“You went to her apartment,” said Samuels, reading from Gomez’s notes, “and you found a Web page with driving directions to a place in New Jersey . . .”
“Someone else called up that page!” George was raising his voice. “Pia would never stop to look for directions, she’d just start driving. She’s very headstrong . . .”
“Someone who’d break into a place, headstrong in that way?” said Samuels.
“But no one reported it, did they,” said George.
“And you also say you received a text from her phone that you don’t believe she sent.” Samuels let that piece of information hang in the air. “Has it occurred to you guys that she’s stringing you along? I don’t see any evidence she’s been kidnapped. We’ll take those pictures you brought in. I wouldn’t mind asking her about this illegal entry she was talking about. I know a lot of those security guys who work at Nano. They are a very professional group and justly concerned about industrial security involving proprietary secrets and any and all episodes of illegal entry. I will take everything you have told us under advisement, and we will be back to you gentlemen. Thank you for coming in.”
“Are you implying that’s what Pia Grazdani was doing? Stealing secrets from her workplace?”
“I’m not saying anything, Mr. Wilson,” said Samuels. “Okay, I think we’re done here. Again, thanks for coming to see us today. Come on, Officer Gomez! We have work to do on this matter.”
Samuels and Gomez walked away.
<
br /> “Don’t say it,” said George.
“I have to,” Paul said. “When someone over eighteen disappears, there has to be hard evidence of foul play, and the only known crime here was committed by Pia herself.”
“But we know she’s been taken,” said George.
“Sure, but look at it from their point of view,” said Paul.
“You heard the guy,” said George, who started to walk out of the building. Paul followed. “He’s pals with the security at Nano. I know Pia can be paranoid, but that looks mighty cozy, don’t you think? I wonder if Nano recruited from the local law enforcement for their security team. What about the FBI? I think we should go and talk to them. I doubt there’s any former Feds at Nano.”
“You think the FBI is going to say anything different? They have the same standards of evidence, and they’re sure to knock it back to the police.”
“So it’s up to us, is that what you’re saying?” said George. “Should we just try to file a run-of-the-mill missing-person’s complaint?”
“I think that’s what we just tried to do.”
“I suppose you are right. This is the kind of situation where Pia’s isolation works against her. But we can’t just do nothing.”
“I don’t know what we can do. Listen, George, I’m willing to help you, of course I am, but I don’t see how breaking into Berman’s house or anything else along those lines is going to help, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“I know if I could only get into Nano. . . .”
“Then what, George? The place is tight as a drum with security. Remember what Pia did last, and she worked there, remember?”
“What about Pia’s boss, Mariel? Mariel whatever her name is. She’s a piece of work, but who knows? We could start there, talk to her, see if she’ll tell us anything.”
“I suppose. If we can figure out how to get in touch with her. I assume she’ll be at work on a Wednesday.”
“My sense is that work is all she has,” said George. “It might be hard to contact her, but we have to do something. Maybe it would be helpful to find out where she lives.” He winked at Paul.
Paul shrugged, but didn’t say anything. At least it was better than trying to break into Berman’s castlelike house or Nano.
53.
THE OLD VICARAGE, CHENIES, U.K.
WEDNESDAY, JULY 24, 2013, 5:14 P.M. BST
Pia had spent the day mostly sleeping in bed, a real bed, not the filthy mattress on the floor of the dungeon where she had talked to Berman. After being examined by the doctor, two men wearing fatigues and surgical masks had moved her to a small, utilitarian bedroom up some cement steps leading out of the basement and along a corridor with the lowest ceiling Pia had ever seen. Even she had had to hunch down while she walked. There was one unadorned lightbulb in the middle of the featureless ceiling.
Pia felt groggy and out of it. She had lost track of time and was unsure of where she was until her mind cleared. Halfway along the route from the basement cell there had been a small window, and Pia had caught a glimpse of some trees and a garden. It had been raining outside, and it looked gray. At the time she had questioned where it could have been. Could it be Colorado? But the trees looked wrong. And it was too green. Berman had said something about being in London. Is that where I am? she wondered.
The two men had shackled Pia to the metal-frame bed in the room. There was no furniture or windows, and the door was of heavy steel. This was another cell, only less humid than the cellar. Pia was livid with Berman for putting her in this position. She saw there was a bedpan she was going to have to use. She felt humiliation along with her anger. She was being kept like an animal.
After a few minutes of being awake, the door opened, and the Chinese doctor came back.
“Do you speak English?” she asked. The man looked at her with a blank expression. He was indeterminately middle-aged, with a puffy, doughy, expressionless face.
“If you’re a doctor, whatever happened to ‘Do no harm’? Tell me that.”
The doctor looked down, and Pia imagined she was about to be injected again with whatever they had been using to knock her out. He grasped her arm.
“No, you don’t!” she screamed. “I don’t want to be drugged again. Leave me alone, you asshole.” Pia squirmed out of the man’s grasp and screamed and shouted at him. He didn’t try to restrain her nor say anything, he simply rapped on the door and stood aside as two Chinese guards came into the room.
“Leave me alone! I demand that you tell me where I am. Where’s Berman? I want to talk to him.”
Pia cried out in pain and one of the guards grabbed her roughly by her bad arm. In the confined quarters of her small room, it took only seconds for Pia to be thoroughly restrained.
The doctor held his hands out to show he wasn’t carrying a needle, and examined Pia’s arm.
“You’re another Nazi experimenter, like Berman. I know you can understand me. You are not going to get away with this. They’re going to get you, too.” The doctor gazed at Pia without a single facial muscle contracting. She couldn’t even tell if he blinked. Without a word, he left, along with the guards.
54.
LIVINGSTON CIRCLE, NIWOT, COLORADO
WEDNESDAY, JULY 24, 2013, 12:34 P.M. MST
Paul Caldwell used a friendly 411 dispatcher to find Mariel Spallek’s address on the city system when it turned out she wasn’t listed in any of the public records. She lived in an affluent town adjacent to Boulder, in a single-story rental building that was one of four attached units. The dispatcher had told Paul there were no other occupants listed at that specific address, a revelation that didn’t surprise Paul in the slightest.
“So now we’re here, what are we going to do?” said Paul, who parked fifty yards down the road, just in case. “Are you going to walk up to the front door and ring the bell?”
“Why not?”
“Didn’t you say you’ve met her? What are you going to do, say you just moved in next door and want a cup of sugar? Say you’ve joined the police department?”
“I don’t think I’m dressed for that.” George had gone to the store, but only added a pair of cheap sneakers to his frat-boy outfit of sweatpants and a T-shirt.
“I don’t know, I’ll think of something,” said George.
“According to Pia, she’s a pistol, George. You’re going to have to think of something good.”
“Let’s face it, Paul, at this time of day, she’s going to be at work. I’m counting on that.”
Before Paul could respond, George hopped out of Paul’s car and walked down the street and up to the door of Mariel’s apartment. The entrance was shielded from the neighbors by wooden fencing. He rang the bell three times and waited. There was no reply, and no barking dog to worry about. George then went next door to the apartment on the end of the row and rang that bell also, and again got no reply. If he had to bet, these apartments were all rented by single people. They had one-car garages, and the gardens were neat enough but untidy. There were no kids’ toys lying around and only one small garbage can in each entryway.
With calm that surprised him, George walked around the back of the building and saw that the yards were separated by fences that extended only as far as a wooded area in back, and were not closed off. No one has a dog, thought George. Good! He approached and clambered around the fence and into Mariel’s yard, then went to her back door, tried the handle, and when that didn’t open, he took a rock from the garden, smashed the glass above the handle and carefully let himself in. That was easy, he thought.
George looked for the alarm box a resident would use to switch the system off or on, but there wasn’t any. He then walked to the front door, opened it, and peered down the street, gesturing to Paul to come in. When Paul didn’t move, George jogged down the road to the driver’s side of Paul’
s car.
“Are you crazy?” said Paul.
“Probably. Do you have any surgical gloves in the car? I’m going to wipe down what I touched already.”
“George, what about the neighbors? And an alarm?”
“There’s no alarm and I’d bet my last dollar there are no neighbors at this time of day. Come on, get the gloves, you’re wasting time. And come in and help.”
“I don’t believe you,” said Paul. “I’ll do anything to help, but it’s got to be within the law, George. You’re on your own on this one.” He got a pair of sterile surgical gloves and handed the package to George. He kept them in his car along with other medical equipment for roadside emergencies.
“Okay,” said George. “Keep a lookout. If she comes back, call me, or honk the horn, or something.”
• • •
ERIC MCKENZIE and Chad Wells were three hours into their shift, tasked with following the Subaru with the distinctive roof racks and the two guys who’d shown up at Nano the previous day. At the briefing at Nano, the head of security said the men weren’t dangerous, and they weren’t to be approached. Just follow them and don’t get noticed.